There is known remote control technology that controls multiple electrical devices in a home not only with respective dedicated remote controllers and the like, but also with operations using a portable terminal device.
According to such remote control technology, even if a user is away from home, the user is able to, for example, program the recording of a desired television program in a recorder at home, control an air conditioner to run in advance, thereby making the interior of the home comfortable for when the user returns home, and the like.
More specifically, in the case of desiring to control a desired electrical device in a home to perform desired operation while away from home, the user operates a terminal device to perform operation input with respect to the electrical device. Data corresponding to the operation content (operation data) is transmitted from the terminal device, and passes through an external server to arrive at a controller in the home (in-home controller). Subsequently, the electrical device to be operated is controlled by the in-home controller according to the content indicated by the operation data.
The above external server is, for example, a server computer installed by the manufacturer selling the in-home controller. The external server provides the user with a remote operation service from outside the home as above, and thus stores user information including authentication information of the user (such as a user ID and a password), and information for communicating with the in-home controller (such as a controller ID and a network address).
Conventionally, in remote operation services of this type, when an in-home controller is newly installed, the user is required to access the external server via the terminal device and perform user registration in advance. At this time, the user is required to input the above user authentication information, as well as the controller ID. The controller ID is an identification (ID) preassigned to the in-home controller by the manufacturer, and is used to uniquely identify the in-home controller, and additionally, determine that the in-home controller is a genuine product. Examples of the controller ID include a manufacturing number, serial number, and the like.
The above controller ID is printed on a sticker or the like affixed to the casing surface of the in-home controller. Because the user is required to visually confirm and read the controller ID first, and furthermore because a controller ID of this type often has many digits, there is a problem in that the input work is burdensome.
To address this problem, Patent Literature 1, for example, proposes technology for registering the controller ID to an external server, without requiring input from the user, when replacing the in-home controller. With this technology, the controller ID is stored in advance in a storage provided in the in-home controller. The procedure for registering a controller ID to an external server proposed in Patent Literature 1 will be briefly described below.
First, the user accesses the external server via the terminal device, and gives an instruction for an in-home controller replacement process. Subsequently, the user operates and controls the in-home controller to transmit a replacement execution message containing the controller ID to the external server.
If the external server receives the replacement execution message from the in-home controller within a predetermined time since receiving the above instruction for the replacement process, the external server updates a customer database by newly assigning the controller ID included in the received replacement execution message to the user.